Madrid, capital city of Spain, is one of those rare cities that inevitably reels you in. Its rich cultural and artistic heritage pulls you one-way, while its capacity for showing you how to have a good time seduces you to sample its vibrant nightlife of good food, wine, and dancing. Madrilenos know how to party as Madrid is world renowned for its lively night scene that stretches into the wee hours. If you’re a laid back visitor and need to retire for a night of quiet rest, you’ll find it helpful to avoid lodgings that abut the frenetic party scene on the streets and plazas. Madrid has upped the ante in its bid to satisfy your artistic bent. Major museums and theaters now include fine restaurants with a penchant for the culinary art. Savor the experience of fine Mediterranean cuisine while you relish your passion for the arts.
Madrid’s Highlights:
Museo Del Prado: This most visited attraction in Spain houses the artwork of great artists such as Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco among others.
Reina Sofia Museum: Here you will find the masterpieces of Pablo Picasso. The museum also showcases 19th and 21st century artist including , Kandinsky and Dali.
Palacio Real: Famed for its architecture and treasures, the Palacio houses the royal armory, a collection of medieval weapons and armor.
Plaza Mayor:This famous square is a venue for bullfights, executions, symphonies, tournaments and markets.
Buen Retiro Park:Madrid’s Central Park – perfect for afternoon retreats and boat rides for children and adults alike. El Retiro also features the Crystal Palace, a structure made entirely of glass.
Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas: Las Ventas is the ultimate bullring in Madrid, with a capacity to seat 25 000 people.It is also known as the home of bullfighting in Spain.
Madrid’s Hotel Villa Real may be a bit more traditional in style than its sister, Barcelona’s Claris—but that’s to be expected, given the stylistic differences between the two cities. The Villa Real may not be an ultra-modern design showcase, but for conservative Madrid, it’s downright striking, Roman mosaics from t ...
The Ritz Madrid boasts a noble heritage; the child, quite literally, of Alfonso XIII, who opened it in 1910. Guests are those with too much good taste to stay elsewhere: Paloma Picasso, Nelson Rockefeller, Barbara Hutton, and the Rainiers, who came here on their honeymoon. Today, rooms look very much like they did in 1910: individually furnished ...
Madrid may be the more conservative of Spain’s big cities, but there’s plenty of modern design, made all the more striking by the contrast with the city’s prevailing classic architecture, much of it dating to the 18th century and earlier. In the center of Habsburg Madrid, near the Puerta del Sol, stands the Hotel Urban, a stunn ...
The Duke of Santo Mauro’s 1895 French-style neolassical mansion is now one of Madrid’s most elegant and luxurious hotels. At just 51 rooms, and located in a largely residential district off the Paseo de Castellana, it’s intimate—a feeling magnified by the discreet nature of the service. Any number of foreign dignitaries a ...
In spite of its not entirely undeserved conservative reputation, Madrid’s got a few modern hotels that, in their own serious way, stand up to some of Barcelona’s more outré experiments. Behind the 1908 facade of a palace facing the famous Retiro park, the AC Palacio del Retiro is a deceptively contemporary hotel, one with swan ...
Suddenly Madrid is so full of minimalist modern hotels it’s impossible to make a decision — all over town you can have a room in any color, as long as it’s white. Bucking the trend is the De Las Letras Hotel & Restaurant. Like more than a few Madrid boutiques, this one (a younger relative of the Bauzá) features conte ...
Hotel Abalu is proof that there’s much more to the hotel business than just location. What was formerly a rather dowdy little hostel (albeit a well-located one, right off the Gran Vía) is now, after some drastic renovation, one of Madrid’s hippest small hotels, the kind of cozy yet stylish boutique hotel that could only be the ...
Ostentatious it most certainly isn’t. Casa de Madrid comes with no towering atrium, no army of fawning bellhops, no long corridors lined with identical international-minimal bachelor pad bedrooms — just a nearly unmarked door (a small plaque simply says CdM) next to a traditional restaurant opposite the Teatro Royal. It feels less li ...
Sure, it’s a Metro ride away from the sights of central Madrid, theluxurious Royal Palace, the opera house, the museums; but for the sort of travelers who’ll stay here, the Hotel Puerta America is a sight unto itself. It’s practically a museum of modern architecture and design, from John Pawson’s lobby and Christian Liaig ...
From the name it could be an overstuffed baroque fantasy; from the outside it could be a bank. The location, just across from the Royal Opera, accounts for the name, and the Los Austrias district, nearby the Royal Palace, is obviously an upscale one. So it’s all the more surprising that Madrid’s Hotel Ópera is as contemporary ...
A former palatial residence divided into spacious apartments for Spanish counts and countesses, the Villa Magna made the transition to its current five-star status after an extremely thorough renovation. The modernist granite exterior might not be exactly what you expect from a royal residence, but at the Villa Magna it’s the unobtrusive p ...
By now the idea that Barcelona is the fun one and Madrid is the serious one is simply a long-dead stereotype. But there is something to be said for the way that Madrid’s gems often lie hidden beneath a stately and sober exterior. Hotel Unico is a case in point: behind an elegant 19th-century facade in the city’s swanky Salamanca dist ...
In typical Madrid style, the new boutique on the block is actually an update of a classic building, or perhaps even an update of an update. This gorgeous 1923 building housed first a rough crowd of bullfighters and associates, then a more sedate and upscale haute-luxury crowd; now it’s the ME Madrid, a glossy and stylish new-school boutiqu ...
Luxury boutique hotels that can accommodate a traveler on business, a couple on a romantic get-away or an adventurous family are somewhat rare, but the Hotel Meninas has somehow pulled this all together under one very hip roof. It’s the quintessential Madrid hotel: a repurposed nineteenth-century apartment building that offers boho-chic st ...
LuxeInACity is a new Luxe Social Guide featuring daily blogs, news and videos from the world of luxury.
The site includes 125 Luxe Cities listing over 50 000 luxury companies such as restaurants, hotels, spas, automobile dealerships, jewelry and watch stores, fashion boutique and much more. LuxeInACity also offers a unique branding solution for select luxury companies by offering them a Luxe Enhanced Profile to be featured in the appropriate city guide. LuxeInACity was created by Essentiality, a bespoke Luxury Personal Assistant and Private Concierge company located in Montreal, Canada.
The founders of LuxeInACity have traveled to over 70 countries and simply want to share their wealth of information with other affluent travelers.
